Apple developing “active packaging” for iPods and iPhones — Known for thinking outside the box, electronics maker Apple Inc. is now apparently working on an in-the-box concept that could provide power to iPods, iPhones and other electronics devices still inside their retail packaging …

Microsoft chucks vomit ad — Earlier this week, we were all rather intrigued by the appearance of a Microsoft ad, in which a wife borrows her husband's laptop and suffers a technicolor nightmare when she espies a site that he has been, um, enjoying. — By Wednesday night, however …

Microsoft to offer Family Pack for Windows 7 Home Premium — In two recent posts (Windows 7 versus Snow Leopard: How much do upgrades really cost? and Do you need more than Windows 7 Home Premium?), I took a closer look at the differences between Windows 7 editions and their counterparts from Apple.

Apple Issues Heat Advisory for iPhone 3G, 3GS — Whether anecdotal reports of iPhones overheating are true or not, Apple has taken them seriously enough to reveal the presence of a temperature warning screen for the iPhone 3G and 3GS. — Here's the deal: an unknown but probably very small number …

No to SQL? Anti-database movement gains steam — But can enterprises take open-source alternatives Hadoop, Voldemort seriously? — Computerworld - The meet-up in San Francisco last month had a whiff of revolution about it, like a latter-day techie version of the American Patriots planning the Boston Tea Party.

Facebook Connect Is A Huge Success — By The Numbers — As much as Beacon was Facebook's low point, that service's replacement, Facebook Connect, is vaulting the company to new heights six months after its November 2008 launch. — CEO Mark Zuckerberg occasionally hints …

Craigslist Sued For Trademark Based On Listing — In what appears to be a first, listings site Craigslist has been sued for trademark infringement based on ads posted by users. — The lawsuit was brought by Texas real estate company First Call Properties, which alleges that it began advertising …

Google App Engine Broken For 4 Hours And Counting — A little over two hours ago, a Google employee posted a note in this Google Groups thread indicating that Google App Engine was “seeing elevated Datastore latency and error-rates, as well as elevated serving error-rates.”

New Linux patch could circumvent Microsoft's FAT patents — Microsoft's recent lawsuit against TomTom, alleging infringement of filesystem patents, has left many questions unanswered about the legal implications of distributing open source implementations of Microsoft's FAT filesystem.

Hammering Usernames — Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) at Facebook is always under pressure to keep the site and all the moving pieces behind the scenes running while still delivering an excellent user experience. The recent launch of usernames to our 200 million active users on a single night …

Apple Patching Serious SMS Vulnerability on IPhone — Apple is working to fix an iPhone vulnerability that could allow an attacker to remotely install and run unsigned software code with root access to the phone. — The attack in question exploits a weakness in the way iPhones handle text …

bringing a bit of twitter to bing — There has been much discussion of real-time search and the premium on immediacy of data that has been created primarily by Twitter. We've been watching this phenomenon with great interest, and listening carefully to what consumers really want in this space.

Mozilla's Crowdsourcing Mystique — As the maker of the Firefox Web browser relies on volunteer developers, such for-profit companies as Google and LinkedIn strain to copy the Mozilla model — There's a cool new video player in the Firefox Web browser that Mozilla released on June 30.

GoDaddy Wants You to Go Twitter — Ideally, your brand has the same name across all of the social sites you use, and, it matches your domain name (for example, we're mashable.com, twitter.com/mashable, and facebook.com/mashable). — Realizing this fact, popular domain registrar GoDaddy …

Voyager, Steamboat Ventures line up behind secretive Ground Truth — Last week, we reported on the secretive mobile analytics startup Ground Truth, noting the involvement of some heavy hitters from the Seattle tech startup scene. At the time of that post, we reported that a venture round was nearing completion with Voyager Capital.

The Coolness Index — Some artists just are not cool - your mom likes ABBA, so there's no way you are going to listen to them, even if you think Mamma Mia is rather catchy. Likewise you may think High School Musical's ‘Bop to the top’ is mucho gusto, but you don't want anyone to know it.

Jammie Thomas will appeal, lawyer says — It's official: Jammie Thomas-Rasset intends to appeal her case, one of her lawyers told CNET News on Wednesday. — “She's not interested in settling,” attorney Joe Sibley said in a brief phone interview. “She wants to take the issue up on appeal on the constitutionality of the damages.

Unlocking the unlocked cell phone market — Nokia and Sony Ericsson are targeting the U.S. with a new set of unlocked phones, but without hefty carrier subsidies will they ever be able to crack the U.S. market? — There is no question that when it comes to features, Nokia and Sony Ericsson's …

Twitter followers ‘can be bought’ — Twitter users who lack an audience for their messages can now buy followers. — Australian social media marketing company uSocial is offering a paid service that finds followers for users of the micro-blogging service.

Improvements to Google Apps contacts — Today, we're happy to announce updates to contacts in Google Apps: new features that many of our enterprise customers have been asking for. — For starters, we've launched a new API that, when combined with the existing shared contacts API …

How wide is the world's digital divide, anyway? — New broadband penetration data shows that the majority of the world has almost no home access to high-speed Internet access; in Africa, for instance, only 2% of homes have broadband. Ars takes a look at the worldwide digital divide.

Mozilla slates first Firefox 3.5 patch — Plans to patch bugs this month that went unfixed in final version — Mozilla will patch the just-released Firefox 3.5 in the next few weeks to stamp out several bugs that went unfixed in the final version of the browser, the company said Tuesday.

PSD2 Compliance in Zoho Books — The Revised Payment Services Directive, also known as the PSD2, is a set of regulatory guidelines laid down by the European Union (EU) for finance, banking, and payment service companies.

Google Fi - a phone plan, by Google — We felt that most phone plans just weren't made with you in mind. So that's why we built Google Fi with features that real people actually want. Click to learn more.